internet

Locusts. If you don’t know what locusts are, go on google and simply understand what it means. Simple, right? So, now the internet knows that you know what locusts are, but does husband/wife know that you googled that?

You might be wondering, “what kind of an analogy is that?” But now I’ve got you thinking. Does the internet know everything? It certainly does, to a great extent. And let us see how much it truly knows.

Targeted Advertisements

Let’s take an example. Say that you have searched up “gyms near me” in your search engine Within the next hour or so, you’ll see ads that show you workouts or fitness tips on the websites or apps you visit. These are called targeted ads.

Saved Cookies

Now suppose you are buying a surprise gift for your spouse, which they’ll know about eventually. You also decide to order it online, so yet again, you go to your browser and look for a gift. Now you are on a site looking for a product, and there comes a pop-up, with stuff that no one reads and then asks you to ‘Accept’ or ‘Decline.’ Those are cookies, and they basically store what you’re searching in your history and then keep showing you websites/articles related to that. So the next time you see something related to soap opera, you probably looked for it.

Again, you can say, “I can pause/clear my history” to avoid that, but it is believed that all this information is probably still stored somewhere(the dark web, maybe). 

Personal Data Shared

Think about your social media for a second and consider the amount of data you share. It’s huge, right? All this data is, as they say, used for your better experience so that what you see first is the most relevant to you in that context. But it is still stored with them, which means they can access it whenever they like and even you won’t know about it, let alone your other half.

Online Shopping And Cash Transactions

That was all about the browsers and socials; let’s talk about the online shopping industry. Pretty much everyone in this day and age shops online, many of them through the online payment. These E-commerce websites in the past few years have also encouraged the use of online payment rather than the conventional Cash On Delivery. 

Yet again, for our convenience, they provide us the option of saving the credit/debit card info for ease in future transactions. This is still safe because you do need your CVV and OTP verification for a successful transaction. But some sites even store the CVV and allow the payment to be processed just by verifying your face or fingerprint (just like your phone lock). This is scary because anyone can easily access those details and make a huge payment.

Entertainment Platforms

Apart from these, there are those streaming platforms, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and more. Since the use of routers have been increased for internet connectivity, use the router panel access guides for hitron login. You need a paid subscription to watch the content they provide for you. These subscriptions are monthly and are connected to your bank account directly. So after every month, on the date that you subscribed, a certain amount of money is deducted from your account, and there’s no verification done there. 

Now, if you think about it, you’ll realize it can be misused quite easily.

Facebook’s massive data breach in 2018 is just one example of how vulnerable our personal information is. Even after being a billion-dollar with high security, an attack managed to leak data of about 50 million users. This just gives a glimpse of how people around the world can access your data. 

Online Storage

The photos/info that is uploaded on google drives/iCloud services is also online. So people with excellent hacking skills can manage to get that information. Black/Grey hat hackers are known to exploit the weakness of security systems, which is helpful for owners so that they can fix those issues.

Miscellaneous Websites 

Another way of accessing your information indirectly are online surveys. Even if they don’t ask for your names since they are online, they somewhat have access to your email-ids, which is not good. They ask you questions that are personal in some way, and thus analysts can know how your mind works hence deriving some data about you. 

How Can You Possibly Avoid Giving The Web Your Personal Info?

Everybody should have a basic idea of how our data is available out there and can be used. Some people still don’t believe that it’s not as secure as they think. Every single search that you perform on the web is recorded and stored somewhere, a critical alert. One of the known ways of avoiding using the incognito mode on your browsers, but again you can’t be incognito all the time. Sometimes even the targeted ads can be of use to us, but that doesn’t mean that our data is being used innocently. 

How the internet knows you better than your spouse does

It has no better answer than to say about the interconnectedness between internet companies. For example, take the popular website amazon. It is one of the multinational wholesale companies online that provides almost everything a man requires to have a living. 

Tracking Data Inputted 

For this situation, we can see if a person goes to a food delivery website if the person orders healthy and fresh food. It is shown that the man is health-conscious and tries to keep him healthy and nourished, so now the data is stored about him, and it will be alerted to the groceries website and puts a special sale on fruits, vegetables, etc. which prompts him to buy, and the purchase is made.

If the man chooses a non-healthy junk food or more fat content food, it is shown that he is not health-conscious and becomes more subtle to gym companies. So now, the grocery website puts a sale on energy bars, protein shakes, etc.

Now, if the man orders food for more than an average man’s consumption for one day alone, it will be prompted that he would have a company with him like a party or a meeting. So the party organizing websites are alerted, and he will receive a message to buy a cake or any other party item.

Drawing Hints from Information shared

Nowadays, everything comes with a company like if you order gym equipment the website immediately suggests a protein shake or some other gym-related stuff. Everywhere we go, we have eyes. Everywhere whenever you booked a ticket to some hilly or snowy region, we receive a message that sweaters are at an offer, or if we upload a picture of ourselves with a dog or a cat on social media, we receive a message to receive a dog or cat food.

It is now coming to the fact that the internet takes care of us more than the life partner. Now we should know that the partner is also a human being and they will also have their needs and stuff to be taken care of. So they cannot always be paying attention to you alone and cannot take care of you forever. 

Solution Provider and Observer

One of the reasons is mentioned above. The other purpose is about secrets that we keep from each other. If we have a personal problem that cannot be spoken out or you feel awkward to describe or discuss with them, it will be buried entirely with us. And you cannot expect them to understand our problem. But in the case of the internet, it doesn’t have any feelings for you, it won’t spread your secret anywhere without your will, or you won’t have to be awkward to search on the internet for a solution for the problem. In this way, you are giving data about yourself without your conscience. For example, if you order some tablets for sugar on a meds website, it is informed to other shopping websites, and it might suggest you buy sugar-free cookies, etc.

The Internet ‘Learns’

One other thing is that the internet is a learner as it learns from the input we put into it. From that, it manufactures the details about you and acts according to your necessities. For the computer, it is only 0’s, and 1’s either the fact must be accurate or not correct. For humans, we have feelings, and we have a special gift of thinking. The computer does not give judgments; it provides information according to the user’s input and doesn’t it is true or not.

So now we are having symptoms of a common cold, which leads to a deadly virus. A regular partner of yours does not take it seriously. Still, if you give this information and symptoms on the internet, it might be found that you have the beginning stage of a deadly virus and immediately suggests you check with a doctor.

An Unknown Companion

For a human, it is reasonable to have depression and have a feeling of loneliness. Others can even cheat on them. But for a computer, it does not have emotions and does not deceive you, and it will treat you equally no matter who you are, either white or black or Asian. It also somewhat interconnects you with other people like on Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.

It makes your life much more comfortable, and it feeds you with all the information it has. It is one of the things in your life which accepts you for who you are, whatever you may be. This quality is rarely found in humans. It trusts in everything you say and never corrects or rejects any of your ideas. It will help and improvise all your senses. It will be there whenever you need it. This makes the internet know to take care of you more than your spouse.

By Anurag Rathod

Anurag Rathod is an Editor of Appclonescript.com, who is passionate for app-based startup solutions and on-demand business ideas. He believes in spreading tech trends. He is an avid reader and loves thinking out of the box to promote new technologies.